Build it, but will they come? A geoscience cyberinfrastructure baseline analsys

Understanding the earth as a system requires integrating many forms of data from multiple fields. Builders and funders of the cyberinfrastructure designed to enable open data sharing in the geosciences risk a key failure mode: What if geoscientists do not use the cyberinfrastructure to share, discover and reuse data? In this study, we report a baseline assessment of engagement with the NSF EarthCube initiative, an open cyberinfrastructure effort for the geosciences. We find scientists perceive the need for cross-disciplinary engagement and engage where there is organizational or institutional support. However, we also find a possibly imbalanced involvement between cyber and geoscience communities at the outset, with the former showing more interest than the latter. This analysis highlights the importance of examining fields and disciplines as stakeholders to investments in the cyberinfrastructure supporting science

Managing technological uncertainty in science incubation:A prospective sensemaking perspective

This paper focuses on the adaption challenge that confronts the top management team (TMT) of science incubators in situations of substantial technological uncertainty. To do that, we draw on the three-year longitudinal analysis of a major bioscience catalyst in the UK. Through the lens of ‘prospective sensemaking’, we follow the TMT as they work with stakeholders in their ecosystem to make sense of a significant technological shift: the convergence of life sciences, IT and other sciences in the health care environment. Our analysis reveals how prospective sensemaking resulted in the launch of a new strategy to exploit these emerging opportunities. However, stakeholders’ increasingly fragmented interpretation of the term convergence and the anticipation of legitimacy challenges in the wider ecosystem resulted in the repositioning of the incubator. Our findings contribute to extant research on science incubation. In particular, the paper sheds light on the complex interactions of incubator TMT’s with stakeholders in situations of technological change and uncertainty. Moreover, responding to technological change does not only affect the structural conditions of an incubator. Rather, it may also require changes to the positioning of the incubator in order to maintain legitimacy in the wider ecosystem. The paper also suggests managerial as well as policy level implications

A Team-Oriented Investigation of ERP Post-Implementation Integration Projects: How Cross-Functional Collaboration Influences ERP Benefits

The benefits companies achieve by implementing an ERP system vary considerably. Many companies need to adapt their ERP integration solution in the post-implementation stage. But after the completion of such a usually very complex integration project, benefits do not emerge by all means. A misfit between the organization and the IS, especially the aspect of cross-functional team collaboration, could explain these divergences. Using an initial theoretical framework, we conducted a single case study to explore the team-oriented perceptions in a post-implementation ERP integration project. To analyze the benefits and the influences in greater depth we disentangled the integration benefits into their particular parts (process, system and information quality). Our findings show that post-implementation ERP integration changes are not always perceived as beneficiary by the involved teams and that cross-functional collaboration has an important influence

Build it, but will they come? A geoscience cyberinfrastructure baseline analysis

Understanding the earth as a system requires integrating many forms of data from multiple fields. Builders and funders of the cyberinfrastructure designed to enable open data sharing in the geosciences risk a key failure mode: What if geoscientists do not use the cyberinfrastructure to share, discover and reuse data? In this study, we report a baseline assessment of engagement with the NSF EarthCube initiative, an open cyberinfrastructure effort for the geosciences. We find scientists perceive the need for cross-disciplinary engagement and engage where there is organizational or institutional support. However, we also find a possibly imbalanced involvement between cyber and geoscience communities at the outset, with the former showing more interest than the latter. This analysis highlights the importance of examining fields and disciplines as stakeholders to investments in the cyberinfrastructure supporting science